20 terrible movies that banked at the box office

In a summer featuring the likes of “The Lone Ranger,”“The Internship,” and “After Earth,” it’s almost an accomplishment to be considered the worst movie of the year, but “Grown Ups 2” is a celluloid egg of Shyamalan-sized proportions. The only positive thing Peter Keough for the Globe could think to offer was: “I guess the world should be grateful that he didn’t make a sequel to ‘Jack and Jill’ (2011).” Aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes currently has the film at a meager 6 percent and inspired Matt Patches from Time Out New York to declare, “Put it this way: In the first five minutes , a deer walks into the star’s bedroom and urinates on his face. It’s all downhill from there.”

Apparently, the same inexplicable fanbase who tunes in to watch dancing dogs in tutus on “America’s Got Talent” also enjoys some quality Sandler shenanigans because “Grown Ups 2” raked in a hefty $41.5 million in its opening weekend. There isn’t a cinema dark enough to hide the shame of these mysterious moviegoers, but it’s hardly the first time that America has turned up en masse to revel in the squalor of a surefire bomb. Here are 20 other horrid movies, as chosen by a variety of film critics, that have gone on to shatter box office records.
Next

Peter Iovino/Columbia Pictures

20. Yogi Bear (2010)

US box office draw: $100.2 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 13%

“‘Yogi Bear’ lacks even the zinging toddler anarchy of the ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ movies. It’s more like the dim ‘Underdog’ movie a couple of years ago.” (Kyle Smith/New York Post)Next

Warner Brothers Pictures

19. Wild Wild West (1999)

US box office draw: $113.75 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 20%

Razzie Nominations: 9

“This monument to the vacuous excesses of chequebook cinema highlights the desperation of those who throw money at the screen hoping it will buy them a blockbuster. Absolutely—repeat absolutely—no laughs from a pitiful script. A profound fog of boredom swiftly descends, quite unrecognisable as the work of the Barry Sonnenfeld.” (Trevor Johnston/Time Out)Next

Universal pictures

18. The Flintstones (1994)

US box office draw: $130.5 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 22%

Razzie Nominations: 4

“‘The Flintstones,’ a $45 million dinosaur that hired no fewer than 36 screenwriters and stars John Goodman, Rick Moranis, Elizabeth Perkins and Rosie O’Donnell, isn’t just awful. It bombs itself into the Stone Age.” (Desson Howe/Washington Post)Next

Industrial Light & Magic/Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies

17. The Last Airbender (2010)

US box office draw: $131.5 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 6%

Razzie Nominations: 9

“‘The Last Airbender’ is dreadful, an incomprehensible fantasy-action epic that makes the 2007 film ‘The Golden Compass,’ a similarly botched adaptation of a beloved property from another medium, look like a four-star classic.” (Ty Burr/Boston Globe)Next

Sam Emerson/Touchstone Pictures

16. Bringing Down the House (2003)

US box office draw: $132.5 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 34%

Razzie Nominations: 0 (how?)

“There are about 15 minutes of genuine, bust-a-gut comedy in ‘Bringing Down the House,’ and, surprisingly, they belong to Steve Martin, who hasn’t been funny on film in years. It’s depressingly tame stuff.” (Ty Burr/ Boston Globe)Next

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal City Studios

15. Patch Adams (1998)

US box office draw: $135 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 23%

“‘Patch Adams’ made me want to spray the screen with Lysol. This movie is shameless. It’s not merely a tearjerker. It extracts tears individually by liposuction, without anesthesia.” (Roger Ebert/Chicago Sun-Times)Next

14. Godzilla (1998)

US box office draw: $136 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 25%

Razzie Nominations: 5

“This $120 million epic of reconstituted Atomic Age trash, created by the same team that made the joshing, slapdash ‘Independence Day’ (writer-producer Dean Devlin and writer-director Roland Emmerich), lumbers more than it thrills.” (Owen Glieberman/Entertainment Weekly)Next

“The film itself looks like something stubbed out in an ashtray. It’s unlikely that even WALL-E could bring himself to scoop up this movie and leave it on his post-apocalyptic junk heap.” (Wesley Morris/Boston Globe)Next

Glen Wilson/Universal Pictures

10. Little Fockers (2010)

US box office draw: $148.4 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 10%

Razzie Nominations: 3

“Antic and only fitfully amusing, ‘Little Fockers’ is the multiplex equivalent of a cash grab — it’s a three-quel, what did you expect? — but that only makes the quality of talent involved more than routinely depressing.” (Ty Burr/Boston Globe)Next

Jon Farmer/Touchstone Pictures

9. The Waterboy (1998)

US box office draw: $161.5 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 32%

Razzie Nominations: 1

“Do I have something visceral against Adam Sandler? I hope not. But I suggest he is making a tactical error when he creates a character whose manner and voice has the effect of fingernails on a blackboard, and then expects us to hang in there for a whole movie.” (Roger Ebert/Chicago Sun-Times)Next

Warner Brothers Pictures

8. Clash of the Titans (2010)

US box office draw: $163.2 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 28%

Razzie Nominations: 2

“’Clash of the Titans’ makes a good case study for what’s wrong with the Hollywood-blockbuster mentality. It isn’t a train wreck—a train wreck would be memorable.” (David Edelstein/ New York Magazine)Next

7. 2012 (2009)

US box office draw: $166.2 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 39%

“In one scene Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen on TV declaring that “Da vurst iss ofah,’’ but he couldn’t be more wrong. Roland Emmerich is just getting started.” (Ty Burr/Boston Globe)Next

Lorey Sebastian/Touchstone Pictures

6. Wild Hogs (2007)

US box office draw: $168.2 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 14%

“The main thing about these guys — the main source of the movie’s fumbling attempts at humor — is that they’re not gay. Really. Seriously. No way. They may worry about people thinking that they’re gay, and they may do things that might make people think that they’re gay — dance, touch one another, take off their clothes, express emotion — but they’re absolutely 100 percent not gay.” (A.O. Scott/New York Times) Next

5. Armageddon (1998)

US box office draw: $201.6 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 39%

Razzie Nominations: 7

“Bay loves to place the camera in the path of meteors or pieces of spaceships or airborne cars. Did one of these projectiles conk him on his noggin? Is that why ‘Armageddon’ is so utterly and thoroughly incompetent?” (Charles Taylor/Salon.com)Next

20th Century Fox

4. Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007)

US box office draw: $217.3 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 26%

“For adults, it’s like being hit over the head with a mallet every 10 seconds for 90 minutes. Two days later, I still had a headache.” (LOU LUMENICK/New York Post)Next

Melinda Sue Gordon/Warner Brothers Pictures

3. The Hangover Part II (2011)

US box office draw: $254.5 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 34%

Razzie Nominations: 1

“Somebody must have roofied me. I left The ‘Hangover Part II’ feeling dazed and abused, wondering how bad things happened to such a good comedy. How could a 2009 raunchfest that slapped a grin on my face I couldn’t unglue degenerate into a cold dish of sloppy seconds?” (Peter Travers/Rolling Stone)Next

DreamWorks Animation/paramount pictures

2. Shrek the Third (2007)

US box office draw: $320.7 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 40%

“There’s no disguising the fact that Shrek the Third has come down with a bad case of sequelitis. You know the symptoms: Lots of razzle-dazzle to distract from the hole at the center of the story. You know, the place where fresh ideas should be.” (Peter Traver/Rolling Stone)Next

Jamie Trueblood/Paramount Pictures

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

US box office draw: $402 million

Rotten Tomatoes score: 20%

Razzie Nominations: 7

“The sequel to the 2007 summer hit ‘Transformers’—based on the Hasbro line of snap-together battle-bots and thus the ultimate toyification of American cinema—offers nothing for mature adult sensibilities. On the contrary, it laughs at the very idea and then blows more stuff up. Fast, deafening, and dumb, the movie is total nonsense and will make a fortune.” (Ty Burr/Boston Globe)Back to the beginning